It is the irony of India that after independence, the democratic governments elected by the people have been allowing open sale of precious natural resources – land, water, forests and minerals in name of public purpose and for development. On one hand, farmers are being forced to hand over their land to local and foreign capitalist corporations, cited as crony capitalist development, and on the other hand, the government is borrowing thousands of dollars from World Bank and other international financial institutions. This huge debt is pushing the country’s economy and future into darkness.

The new ploy to facilitate this loot and process is now being pushed in the wider framework of the industrial corridors since mid 2000. Eleven such corridors have been proposed in the country out of which the leading ones are Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) and the Amritsar-Kolkata Industrial Corridor (AKIC). These corridors shall include dedicated freight corridors, private trains, electricity generating stations, smart cities, inter-linking of rivers, and several large projects which will have a huge impact on the country’s agricultural system and livelihood of the nature based communities.

DMIC’s first round itself will acquire roughly 3,90,000 hectares. In the first stage of the AKIC, Uttar Pradesh government has given 30,000 hectares of land and a loan of 14,000 crores from the World Bank has been taken. For DMIC 40,000 crores loan from Japan Bank of International Cooperation has been taken.

Notices regarding land acquisition have been issued, farmers land has been illegally marked as ‘R’ (reserved) in land records, fraudulent public hearings being organized, forceful consent being taken and many other illegalities done by the authorities. People have been protesting on the ground in many places even then the government is busy seeking consent for its projects and work has begun in many places.

Over the years, many of us have undertaken awareness raising activities in the area, educating the farmers and workers of their rights and the violations being done by the government agencies. We all came together in 2013 in Delhi and since then many other important developments have taken place. With a new government at the Centre and in many states, its time to meet again and take stock of our struggles.

With this in mind a two-day national meeting is being held on April 22 to 23 at Indian Social Institute, New Delhi. We do hope you will join us and also let others know of the meeting. Let us know if you need a place to stay during the meeting, we would try to arrange it.